Give me a shot of whiskey in a dirty glass! Pipe cleaning without solvents

I rarely use solvents. If there is any build up (stem, tenon...basically not cake in the bowl), however, I use some 151 on a pipe cleaner. It is a little sweet at first but dissipates quickly.

I use bourbon soaked pipe cleaners in the draft hole. I love the smell and flavour it adds, especially to burley forward blends, but to each their own.

I only use alcohol on estate restorations.

I'm with you. I use pipe cleaners on the airway and a paper towel for the chamber after each smoke. I use a pocket knife on excess cake. I clean my pipes with alcohol maybe once a year. Next time I might try to rinse them with warm water afterwards.

It's important for me to keep things simple. I hate unneccessary fussing. So if my pipes work and taste nice without me cleaning them all the time, well then I won't clean them all the time. Once a year is ok, and I'll give them some wax and a buff as well.

I use water to clean my pipes. At my place in Brazil, I only have room-temperature water. Can't be bothered to boil/heat some, and I don't use a hot water system here to heat tap water because it's not really needed. It still works fine with room temperature water.

When not here, I use hot tap water, and it seems to work fine too.
I also went so far as to load up my pipes with soap suds and went to work with a shank brush to get them very clean. It is a *neutral* soap without moisturizers, scents, etc.
But... last week, I was twisting the stem off of one of my pipes and the shank came off with it. It was a Tsuge with a fat knuckle of bamboo. Maybe the water caused this. Maybe the relative humidity of where I'm at in Brazil caused it. Hard to say. Beware, I guess. I applied some crazy glue to an area that I figured would not be exposed to the inner chamber and put it back on. Seems tight now.
Side note: That pipe was clean when the shank came off. But, there seemed to be a gap in the bamboo/briar shank connection that was impossible to clean. Without the bamboo shank, I was able to scrape a fair amount of built up gunk where the bamboo met the briar portion of the shank. It was a bit disappointing, because I couldn't see how to clean that part of the pipe without the bamboo there. And obviously, you normally can't take the bamboo off to clean it. Poor construction I was not meant to see, I guess.
Further side note: I have a Dunhill bamboo shank pipe and the mouth piece, where it fits into the bamboo shank, came off once. There is a small piece of plastic that inserts into the bamboo, so that the mouth piece/stem can fit in. One day, the inner plastic piece twisted out. This was before I was washing with water and that pipe lives in Canada. It's on the west coast, which I guess is also humid, but my home there is not humid, so I'm not sure what caused it.
Could just be an issue of bamboo shanks, I don't know.
As to every other pipe I have, the water seems to work just fine. Haven't noticed any ill effects and they taste great. They dry very fast too. I know it's heresy, but I also love the effect of soap and a shank brush for the shank and the bowl. I get a load of suds and just brush the hell out of it. My pipes taste great after that treatment, but to be very clear, I only use unscented, non-moisturized, basic soap. It's very easy to find in Brazil. I'm sure I'll find a solution in Canada as well, despite much of the soap offerings being adulterated with scents, moisturizers, etc. They must have a brand for sensitive skin or something.
A lot of people will jump out of their seats, but water and suds... Now that is clean. Try it out on a beater pipe to see how it goes.

Well, apparently yesteryear's pipe smokers didn't know any better than to huff and puff like a freight train, and their pipes were continuously sodden with OTC sewer sludge, leading to a "soggy, ill-tasting mess". In these enlightened times, science has taught us to sip slowly and delicately, creating little to no moisture and consistently leaving a fine white ash. When smoked properly, a bowl of good Virginia flake should last at least ten days, longer when smoked by a true pipe artiste. The havoc and destruction wrought by using spirits to brutally rape one's pipe is why an estate pipe older than two or three years can rarely be had, as anything but organic spring water disintegrates them.

It boils down to what I consider to be a "good smoking experience." By the time all my pipes, smoked the previous week, are cleaned and ready, the solvent is long gone to my palate.

"Without regular and diligent cleaning, your wonderful new pipe will become a soggy, ill-tasting mess, and will no longer provide you with the smoking pleasure you desire."

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The writer of the above is simply wants everyone to have the same "high or low" expectation he has. We all have a personal expectation. Do what gets it takes to get you a satisfying smoke. With the pipe ... it's all about me and no-one else.

So wait, this isn't a primer on how to wipe my ass?

Extra fluffy for me, please.

Different strokes for different folks. I like to taste the flavors in my tobacco. So, my practices revolve around whatever enables me to do that. Occasionally that includes water rinses, occasionally alcohol scrubs, occasionally just pipe cleaners of various descriptions and a bit of paper toweling.

I use Everclear when needed (not very often) mostly for estates. For the most part a pipe cleaner is sufficient, occasionally a trip to the kitchen sink with a bristled cleaner. Pretty sure I’m not gonna run water through my Bamboo shank, definitely not gonna use soap,,,

there are certainly those that would make it seem as though caring for a pipe requires much more effort than is necessary

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That's a personal call. It might be more effort than is necessary for you. That doesn't mean that it's more effort than necessary for someone else. There's just way too much "My way or the highway" around. When asked, I'll share what works for me with regard to pipes and tobaccos. It's what works for me, not a cardinal Truth. And that's the point.
If a novice pipe smoker is going to be deterred by an article rather than personal experience, then his/her/they/its interest might not have been all that great to begin with.